We often use these words interchangeably. When we grow, we assume we have progressed and therefore, we have become successful. This is not necessarily true. Growth does not necessarily mean progress. With progress, success is not necessarily attained. The words denote very different meanings that must be understood clearly to truly succeed in business.
Growth in Business
To grow a business means to sell more, to have a larger market share, to have more revenue or profits. The word simply means the output of a business endeavor has increased from one period to another. That is all. It does not mean that with growth, progress is assured.
Progress in Business
Progress requires knowledge sharing has to go hand in hand with growth. If a company sells more products in one year compared to the year before and has developed knowledge and expertise that is retained and shared with all employees in terms of how that growth occurred, it has progressed. It has learned what was done right and what needs to be avoided.
This learning, if properly retained, shared, and leveraged upon characterizes progress. It enables the growth to be sustained over time. It enhances maturity levels of the organization. It imbues a sense of accountability and purposeful commitment to continue the growth. Only then can there be real progress. Otherwise, the growth may happen but without such progress, it cannot be sustained.
Success in Business
Can such an organization that is progressive be deemed to be successful?
Not necessarily. Success is contingent on the extent to which an organization extends its expertise, provides support, and enables all other organizations associated with its growth to grow as well. This includes its customers, its end users, its vendors, its suppliers as well as society at large. It means extending the benefits it has gained to benefit others within its circle of influence. It calls for having a deep-seated commitment to extend support to as many external stakeholders as possible
Transitioning from growth to success
Extending support entails adding value to all companies within its network to develop and sustain an ecosystem within which the organization thrives. When knowledge is shared, and support is provided, value is delivered to all organizations without any expectation of returns.
Such a company is deemed to be successful. It succeeds because it realizes how collaborating with clients, end users, suppliers, vendors as well as regulatory bodies adds value its own success. Hence growth should not be equated with success. To achieve success, both enablers are drivers must be present.
What drives the transition from growth to success
The driver for the progression from growth to progress and onward to success is leadership that is committed to succeed through sustained learning and collaborative effort with all external stakeholders. Leaders that are dedicated to the principle of holistic success which requires all stakeholders to be successful for the organization to succeed. Such leaders seek engagement and growth of all internal and external stakeholders associated with the organization as primary indicators of success, not output and performance of the organization
What enables the transition from growth to success
The enablers for such a transition are sharing critical knowledge and embracing agility
Sharing critical knowledge
This requires developing and sustaining a work environment that facilitates the capture, retain, and share critical experience and expertise gained as the organization grows. This sharing enables employees to leverage on past learning to sustain the progression of its growth. This comes about when sharing of expertise and experience is undertaken as a normal practice undertaken routinely at all levels in the organization.
Embracing agility
To achieve holistic success, such an organization embraces agile practices that focus on adding value to all stakeholders. Adding value indicates seeking continually to increase benefits and at the same time reducing cost associated with acquiring these benefits. The commitment to continually focus on adding value becomes an overriding purpose of such an organization that seeks to succeed.
Hence both sharing critical knowledge and embracing agility are key enablers for making the transition from growth to success. These enablers are driven by leadership dedicated towards serving the interest of internal and external stakeholders. Without such leadership that drives sharing critical knowledge and embracing agility, organizations may experience growth on an ad hoc basis but will be unable to sustain the growth over time to success in business.
Summary and Conclusion
In summary being successful requires growth to be sustained, leveraged upon, and shared. Sustaining growth is premised on continually sharing critical knowledge acquired because of growth. Leveraging on learning that is shared to sustain the growth by continually applying lessons learned enables growth to continue over time. This denoted real progress. Success comes about through the development of a collaborative culture cultivated by leadership that ascribes to the notion that we only succeed when we all succeed. This notion is embedded as a key agile principle that when internalized, facilitates collaboration with all external stakeholders.
